


Helpless Against The Lies My Parents Told Me

by shadowkat67



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s03e12 Helpless, Episode: s07e17 Lies My Parents Told Me, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:15:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22341661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Summary: I rewatched the Season 3 Buffy Episode Helpless - while watching it, I began to see parrallels to the Season 7 episode Lies My Parents Told Me, which served to enrich both episodes and expose new layers to the narrative - that I had not noticed before. If you are a Buffy fan, you know that Lies My Parents Told Me is a relatively controversial button-pushing episode that has, shall we say, been discussed to death. If you aren't, you are no doubt bored and have wandered elsewhere.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	Helpless Against The Lies My Parents Told Me

Rough estimate - how many stories, live journal posts, movies, and tv shows have you seen or read discussing bad parents or parential issues? Perhaps would be easier to count how many you've seen or read or heard that did not discuss bad parents or parential issues? Specifically - two - sick mothers and disapproving fathers.

At a recent family gathering, we started discussing our mothers and fathers. Two generations were present, and we were all together to mourn the passing of our grandmother. It wasn't quite a whinefest, but it was interesting - because our parents told us how disappointed they'd been in their parents, and how they worked to do the exact opposite, while we in turn informed them, how we were disappointed in how they brought us up, and were damned if we would not do the exact opposite. Having no children of my own, and actually relatively few issues regarding my own upbringing, I found the discussion ironically amusing.

Then about two days ago, I rewatched the Season 3 Buffy Episode _Helpless_ \- while watching it, I began to see parrallels to the Season 7 episode _Lies My Parents Told Me_ , which served to enrich both episodes and expose new layers to the narrative - that I had not noticed before. If you are a Buffy fan, you know that _Lies My Parents Told Me_ is a relatively controversial button-pushing episode that has, shall we say, been discussed to death. If you aren't, you are no doubt bored and have wandered elsewhere.

What struck me as interesting in both episodes - is they aren't just discussing the relationships between the parents and their children, but on a deeper level the episodes discuss the roles our society tells us that women and men must perform. Women, traditionally, are watchers, researchers, librarians, teachers, housewives, and caregivers. They stay at home. They must be protected. While men, traditionally, go out and slay the monsters, fight wars, protect the household, are our soliders and our superheroes. In 2003, I remember having a rather vehement fight on a fanboard with a poster who insisted that women were not capable physically of being firemen. They could not take on that role. Having met a few female firemen in my lifetime, I disagreed. But, we are taught over and over again by our parents and the media that women are watchers and men slayers. The guy fights the wars, the woman stays home and watches. Buffy the Vampire Slayer flips this traditional role. Here the woman is the weapon, she slays the monsters, while the man stays at home, watching, researching.

Except the patriarchial structure remains, he does not give up control - he guides, he justifies that he is the general - she is his weapon. She's the sword, he's the hand the wields her. We can say that this is not dissimilar in our own society - the woman guides her husband, coaches him, and acts as a general, she doesn't have the physical power to slay, so uses him as her weapon. What is that saying? The woman is the brains behind the man? This is what we are taught. These are role models. If, as women, we succeed in careers - we often are patterning ourselves after our fathers, if we stay at home - we often are patterning ourselves after our mothers. We are annoyed by our mothers demands, yet crave our father's approval. And if we think about it, much like that song in South Pacific sung by the young Lieutenant, we are carefully carefully taught to hate what our parents hate, and love what our parents love. Whether what they teach us is true or not, is another matter, and often one we do not discover until we have left home and started families of our own.

In Helpless - Buffy's mother is taken captive by a criminally insane vampire named Kralik (or something like that, I don't know the exact spelling). Kralik was apparently abused by his mother. He tells Joyce in the episode, which is patterned a great deal after Little Red Riding Hood, that he plans on turning Buffy into a vampire so that she, in turn, can eat her mother. Just as he ate his.

Kralik exists because the Watcher Council, the organization that trains, assists and controls the vampire slayer, has devised a test for slayers and Watchers. Upon the Slayer's 18th birthday, her Watcher removes her power, puts her in a facility with a vampire - who she has to use her wits to destroy. Upon the Council's orders - Giles, Buffy's Watcher, we learn has been using adrenaline blockers to weaken Buffy, to make Buffy - as he puts it, throw like a girl. The plan is working fine until Kralik outsmarts his keepers, turns one of them into a vampire like himself, and decides to play his own little game. As he states, "Oh we'll still play their game, just not by their rules."

Buffy survives, saves her mother, and forgives Giles - who not only confesses what he is doing, but redeems himself by attempting to save her and her mother. He is also fired by the Council. Helpless ends well or so it seems. But, we are left with a bitter taste in our mouths regarding the Watcher Council.

The episode with a few minor exceptions, is told mainly from Buffy's point of view. We feel what Buffy is feeling, we see what Giles is doing before she does, but it is from Buffy's point of view and Buffy's vantage point that we are seeing Giles. We know that Buffy has been let down by her biological father, who on occassion takes her to the ice show on her birthday, but this year for business reasons has opted out. She is gathering up the courage to ask Giles to take her to the ice show. Her mother offers to take her, but she turns Joyce down and clearly wants Giles, her surrogate father to take her instead. But Giles is weakening her for a fight to the death with a deadly vampire - which even Giles acknowledges is cruel. He never hears her request. And as a result, Buffy must save her mother - who the vampire Kralik takes hostage - because his own mother rejected him, violently abused him, and treated him like crap. "I have unresolved issues with mothers, obviously," he informs Joyce. Here, the vantage point and the protagonist is Buffy, the antagonists are the vampire and Watchers (specifically Quentin Travers - the head Watcher, and his two henchman with the somewhat begruding and reluctant aid of Giles) - who work together to hurt Buffy for different reasons.

Lies My Parents Told Me - which takes place when Buffy is about 22 and an adult, is told mainly from the vampire and Watcher's point of view, not Buffy or the slayer's. This episode is the flipside of Helpless. Here the "Helpless" party or the party being set-up and tested is a vampire, an ensouled vampire, but also much like Kralik, potentially insane. Spike is being controlled by a song - whenever he hears it he becomes a crazed vampire. The Watchers doing the manipulating this time around are Robin Wood and Giles - two authority figures in Buffy's life. One is her boss, the other her mentor and surrogate father. Buffy is the slayer, the both men wish to control. Both men were taught by Watchers. One of the men "watched" as his mother fought a monster, and stayed at home, while that monster killed her. His mother slayed the demons, while the man who raised him - watched from the sidelines and taught him to hate the demons that killed her. Giles similarily was trained and taught by a Watcher father. The vampire, Spike, much like Kralik in Helpless - had a sick mother. Except his was the opposite of Kralik's - she clung to him, loved and adored him - dependent upon him due to her own illness. She also crippled him - keeping him at home, dependent on her and her love. Like Kralik - Spike eats his mother, unlike Kralik, he turns her into a vampire. His motive, unlike Kralik's, is not to kill her, but rather to give her eternal life. Unfortunately it does not quite turn out the way he envisioned, and his mother becomes the demon that Karlik's was in life. Traumatized by this turn of events, and aided no doubt by the teachings of Angelus - a sort of evil yoda/mentor or Spike's Giles, Spike becomes obsessed with killing or fighting women, preferably those he cannot easily kill - ie, slayers. This is similar to Kralik in Helpless - who is equally obsessed with mothers, and wishes to make Buffy his mate, watch Buffy kill and hate her mother. Spike, is the opposite, he loves Joyce, treats her with the respect he'd treat his own Mum, and is obsessed with besting the slayer. Both are power games.

Robin Wood, much like Kralik and Spike, also has mother issues. He lost his mother. She chose to fight over taking care of him. He's been taught that that is not right. Our society teaches us that is not right. Spike even states it - "your mother didn't love you enough to choose you over her mission". It's a cruel statement - but it is, if you think about it, the one we hear every day in the news. That of course does not make it true. It is the lie that Spike's mother taught him. That a mother doesn't love her son, unless she chooses him over everything, and he doesn't love her unless he chooses her over everything. When Spike turns his mother into a vampire, she actually for once tells him the truth - that he has to divorce himself from her, that he can't be with her forever. Just as Buffy tells Robin Wood that he has to learn to let go of his own mother - as she had to let go of hers, chasing the demon who killed her, a demon that no longer exists, will not bring her back.

Then there's Giles, the third wheel in this piece, who like Helpless - assists his Watcher co-hort in decieving Buffy to lay a trap. In this case the trap is not meant for her, but rather for her vampire consort/sometime lover - Spike. He is arguably justified - Spike is after all under the control of a trigger, and seemingly reluctant to accept assistance in ridding himself of it. Giles has attempted to help Spike - by bring a magical tool to get inside Spike's head and release whatever is enabling the trigger. Spike, from Giles' pov is refusing to cooperate. And Buffy, from Giles point of view, is blinded by her feelings for him much as she was blinded by her feelings for Angel back in Helpless. He doesn't trust Buffy's judgement and chooses to side with Robin Wood, a man he barely knows. His justification is that he is protecting her. But, if we compare the sequence to Helpless, we'll see that he may in a way be attempting to assert control. Helpless is a turning point in the Giles/Buffy relationship - he ceases being her trainer/watcher at this point and her trust in his authority has been damaged. In Lies, Buffy has a similar reaction to Giles betrayal, except this round she is less forgiving, she shuts him out. He has proven in his inability to trust in her judgement, that he is not deserving in turn of her trust. She cannot trust Giles to provide her with sound advice. He lies.

Lies reveals that we cannot always save the mother from the big bad wolf. She does get eaten. She does die. Everyone dies. And the father, or huntsman, is not always the hero of the piece - he may be wrong. He may lie to us. And the wolf or vampire may be a deranged and troubled sheep in wolf's clothing. It's not so clear-cut.

In Helpless - Buffy feels helpless against the weight of events. Her parents - whom she still needs, yet are increasingly absent. Her teacher and mentor, who has proven not to be as trustworthy as she expected. And her lover, who reveals to her that he loved her from afar, saw her heart, yet remains out of reach, forever lurking in the shadows. In Lies - Buffy, like most of us, discovers that parents are human, they lie to us often with our best interests at heart - even if we may, and rightfully so, disagree. Her lover, lurking in the shadows, she also realizes is not the romantic leading man, all hearts and flowers and romantic poetry, but a dangerous man with issues not unlike her own. She is not saving her mother in this peice, she has rather in an odd way become her mother, but also to an extent her father - taking on the traditionally male role of protector. Buffy isn't watching.Buffy rushes to Spike's rescue in this story, not Wood's, not the council's, not her mother's. And in this story, she is unneeded, the vampire and watcher fought amongst themselves. She's told what they fought about - it is a stray line, uttered by Spike, "I gave him a pass on account of the fact that I killed his mother." And she tells Wood about her own mother. What she doesn't hear, as she doesn't in Helpless is the discussion between Wood and Spike, or Kralik and Joyce.

Kralik tells Joyce, the standin for his real mother, why he killed his own. In the first three seasons of Buffy - Buffy's parents often act as stand-in's for the villians own parential issues. Joyce is Kralik's and to a degree Spike's in Lover's Walk. Giles is Angel's in both Becoming Part II and Amends. In Season 7 - Buffy herself becomes the stand-in. She is in turn referenced by both men, who both date her, and when the two fight - it is not about Buffy. Robin does not go after Spike because of Buffy, and Spike does not spare Robin's life because of Buffy. Their argument has nothing to do with her, and yet everything to do with what she represents. She is the mother neither can have or understand. The woman who chose not to live the traditional mother's life. Buffy chose to be the fireman in this story, the hunter, the slayer of monsters - not the damsel, not the watcher, not the caregiver. She is both the general and the solider. They cannot control her, any more than they could their own. Spike's mother was by all accounts the traditional stay-at-home Mom, in some respects similar to Buffy's. Until Spike turned her into a vampire - then horrified staked her.  
Robin's Mom, Nikki, was like Buffy. Spike was turned on by her - and set out to kill her, since he could hardly fuck her, it was the only other option. He takes her coat to remember her by and as sort of a power cloak. Which over time becomes a security blanket of sorts. Another thing Wood and Spike fight over. It is ironically Wood who frees Spike from the trigger - by playing the song and fighting with the demon, literally pounding out the painful memories. But what they are fighting over is not Nikki - it is what she represents.

Spike's last lines to Wood are chilling, but only because we've been taught them ourselves. They are in a way an echo of Kralik's to Joyce, and Kralik's condemnation of Joyce - who has chosen to have a career, and is not married to Buffy's father, and is not a traditional Mom. They are also an echo of Quentin Traver's lecture to Giles - the slayer is our weapon. She is not her own person. She exists for our use. We guide her. We control her. Spike tells Wood that slayers are always alone, they put the mission first. Quentin Travers in Helpless tells Giles more or less the same thing. And Giles like Travers, attempts to manipulate and control Buffy and like Travers, fails.

We are told by our parents that these are the roles we must play. But are they? Are we helpless against these dictates? Do we require their approval? As adults we can choose what to remember and what to take to heart.

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy chooses to dismiss Giles edict. She tells him that while she agrees, sometimes difficult choices must be made - in some cases they are not the only choices. He is not the boss of her. She is not Helpless any more. Once again, as in Helpless, Buffy passes the test, Giles and Wood do not - for much the same reason Giles doesn't in Helpless - they've placed emotion above rational thought. Buffy is looking ahead. She is using her wits. She chooses to save Spike, not just because she has feelings for him, but she has come to believe that he could turn the tide in their war. It is not a niave belief - considering the villian that season, the first, has gone out of its way to attempt to sway Spike, corrupt and use him. She's right in guessing that if the First is so intent on killing or swaying Spike, perhaps Spike could aid her in an unexpected way. She sees the big picture, while Wood and Giles do not.

In Helpless - Buffy is not quite as far-sighted. What she sees is betrayal and she is not wrong. The Council is trying to control her. It sees her as little more than its tool.  
A metaphor perhaps for parents - who often see their children as little more than reflections of themselves, a tool or extension of their own wants and dreams. Validation. Their legacy.  
How often have we heard the statement - "I want to have kids so I can continue my line" or "have a legacy" or "something of me will survive". Every time I hear that statement, I want to counter - but your kids are not you. Buffy is not Joyce, not Hank, and certainly not Giles. She is not their legacy. She is not the councils. Yet, like all children, she has believed some of the lies...and she is to a degree the product of their upbringing. We all are. Our parents made us who we are today, at least to an extent, via DNA and their own actions and statements. We are never completely free of our parents no matter how much we may wish to be, they color our lives and our decisions.

As a result, it should be little surprise that the sick/nagging/coddling mother and disapproving/controling/neglectful father are such universal tropes. That they appear over and over in our fairy tales and horror stories. From Little Red Riding to Hansel & Gretel. Here, in these two episodes, seen about four seasons apart, the writers examine the tropes from two separate perspectives, the child's and the adult's, proving that as we get older, our parential issues don't so much fade as become more ingrained. Are we helpless against such things? I don't know. The writers don't tell us.

**Author's Note:**

> 1.The song itself or Spike's trigger - lends us a clue about the true nature of the push me/pull me relationship between Spike and his mother, as well as the relationships between Spike and every woman he gets involved with. Like Angel, Spike appears to be doomed to repeat the same relationship over and over again. Remember as you read the lyrics that this is the song that Spike's mother sang all the time to him, while he sat beside her - almost like a lullaby. To soothe him.
> 
> Early one morning, just as the sun was rising,  
> I heard a maid sing in the valley below:  
> "Oh don't deceive me, Oh never leave me,  
> How could you use a poor maiden so?
> 
> "Remember the vows that you made to me truly;  
> Remember how tenderly you nestled close to me.  
> Gay is the garland, fresh are the roses  
> I've culled from the garden to bind over thee.
> 
> "Here I now wander alone as I wonder  
> Why did you leave me to sigh and complain?  
> I ask of the roses, why should I be forsaken?  
> Why must I here in sorrow remain?
> 
> "Through yonder grove, by the spring that is running,  
> There you and I have so merrily played,  
> Kissing and courting and gently sporting,  
> Oh, my innocent heart you've betrayed!
> 
> "How could you slight so a pretty girl who loves you,  
> A pretty girl who loves you so dearly and warm?  
> Though love's folly is surely but a fancy,  
> Still it should prove to me sweeter than your scorn.
> 
> "Soon you will meet with another pretty maiden,  
> Some pretty maiden, you'll court her for a while;  
> Thus ever ranging, turning and changing,  
> Always seeking for a girl that is new."
> 
> Thus sang the maiden, her sorrows bewailing;  
> Thus sang the poor maid in the valley below:  
> "Oh don't deceive me, Oh never leave me,  
> How could you use a poor maiden so?"


End file.
